Behold the bag of loverly WendyKnits Sunrise sock yarn sent to me by the very generous Beth at Lorna’s Laces. There are eight skeins there, so four lucky winners, since it takes two skeins for a pair of socks.

The random number generator drew three names from the blog comments, and one from the Plurk contest I ran in parallel. (My Plurk-buds sometimes get an extra chance in my contests!) The winners are:

Linda Rich
Kelaine
Diana

and Plurker PlainJane.

Check your email — I’ve emailed each of you.

And thanks again to Beth at Lorna’s Laces for creating this lovely colorway and for sending me the bag of yarn for the giveaway!

Meanwhile back at the ranch, I’ve completed the first Muriel Sock.

And a close-up:

Love love love this yarn and colorway. It occurs to me that if I wanted to eat Cheetos while knitting these socks, no one would be the wiser.

We are having a quiet day chez WendyKnits — just hanging out and chilling.

Lucy would like you to know that she still loves her sheepskin in the warmer months — particularly when the a/c is on!

I’m glad to see that so many of you enjoy the Craig Ferguson Show as much as I do.

In answer to some comments questions — sometimes I watch it when it is on (starts at 12:35am). I always DVR it, so on the off chance I’m asleep, I watch it the next afternoon.

You may ask — how is it that this crazy lady is up watching Craig Ferguson at 12:35am when she gets up at 4:00am on weekdays?

I don’t sleep.

Well, that is not exactly true, but I don’t sleep normally. On weeknights I will usually fall asleep 10 pm-ish, but I invariably wake up between midnight and 12:30am. I will usually fall back asleep naturally about 2:00am and get a couple more hours of sleep. Experience has taught me that I might as well get up and do something for a while rather than lie in the dark and try to fall back asleep before I’m ready to because it just ain’t gonna happen. For years I tried that and stressed about it a lot. I tried over-the-counter sleep aids, prescription sleep aids, homeopathic remedies, etc., but I am impervious to drugs. (Seriously — it takes an elephant tranquilizer to knock me out.)

I recently just gave up and embraced my weird sleep patterns and find I’m much more relaxed and happy this way. While I almost never knit in the middle of the night, I do design and write sock patterns. It’s one of my most creative times.

As the Heel Turns

Don’t you think that would be a great name for a soap opera about knitting and knitters? Huh?

I am turning the heel. Excitement abounds!

Speaking of excitement, I’ll be announcing the winners of the WendyKnits Sunrise sock yarn giveaway next week.

Lucy can hardly stand the suspense.

The Rivulets Sock pattern is now available free in pdf format — here and from my Free Patterns page. Enjoy!

A few of you have asked me for more information about my Charlotte, NC trip. The basic info is on my “2009 Travel and Teaching Schedule” tab up at the top of the blog. (Heh. I just typed “blob” instead of “blog.” Twice.)

There is more detailed information on Charlotte Yarn’s Special Events page. I hope to see a bunch of you there!

About that sock I showed yesterday . . .

That was evidence of my negative progress. I had done 2″ of a pattern and decided it wasn’t quite right, so ripped it out. I’ve since made some better progress with an altered pattern.

The yarn is Sanguine Gryphon Sea Sock in the “Phoenix” colorway. This is a fingering weight yarn that is 70% superwash merino,30% seasilk. It’s a joy to knit.

The pattern is my own and is inspired by a new friend. Said friend is a busy mom of an adorable little girl. She also has a challenging career. She mentioned over the weekend that she loves the idea of handknit socks as a stamp of individuality you can pair with your business wardrobe. So I’m calling these socks “Muriel’s Socks” in her honor.

In this photo, I’ve just taught Muriel to knit (mwa-ha-ha!) and am demonstrating the glories of Plurk to her (double mwa-ha-ha!)

See how dangerous I am? (Dr. Jackie, take note of the level in the whiskey bottle.)

Why I Love Craig Ferguson

Need I say more?

Lucy Sez:

“Stretch!”

Yeah, back to the day job today. Back to reality. Yawn.

But now I’m looking forward to my next knitting trip, which will be two weeks from Friday, to Charlotte, NC.  It’s always nice to have something fun to look forward to, right?

And I finally finished unpacking all the stuff from my Oklahoma trip, so I can model my little sheep ears for you:

There are already photos of me resplendent in my sheep ears floating around on the internet, so there’s no reason for me not to share here.

The ears were a gift from a very fun group of knitters at the SWAK Knit-out who were all wearing their own sheep ears. They explained to me that they were “Baaaaaaaaaad Girls.” So I became an honorary Baaaaaaaaaad Girl!

Oh, and I did finish the second Rivulet sock while I was away.

And I started something new:

But I’ll talk about that tomorrow.

By the way, my two newest patterns are now available for sale at The Loopy Ewe. The Two-fer Socks:

And Highland Fling:

Highland Fling is a design I created as a freebie pattern for attendees of The Loopy Ewe Spring Fling last month. Now anyone can buy it! Speaking of the Loopy Ewe, the WendyKnits Sunrise yarn is now available for sale, and it is indeed at the Loopy Ewe (assuming it’s not all sold out). It was at S.W.A.K. over the weekend, so they may have some left as well.

Lucy Sez:

“Momma, why are you wearing sheep ears?”

I arrived home last night at about midnight from my wild weekend in Oklahoma!

I got to Oklahoma City late morning on Friday and was met at the airport by Tempted Yarns Stacy, her sister Muriel (who is now on Plurk as BFFofWendy), and Stacy’s beautiful daughter. We drove into the city to have lunch in Bricktown, at Toby Keith’s restaurant. We were joined by OKC knitter Courtney (who is now on Plurk as YarnTramp) and we had a wonderful time laughing, talking yarn, and comparing purses.

We spent a couple of hours Friday afternoon at the Oklahoma City National Memorial. It’s a beautiful memorial to the victms of the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. It was a lovely sunny afternoon, so I took a couple of photos. The reflecting pool:

And the Survivor Tree:

Then we headed out to Guthrie, the site of the Knit Out.

We stopped by the shop, S.W.A.K.:

I felt strangely at home when I saw the front window.

And again when I saw the cash register:

Keely and the gang were great — made me feel right at home.

We dropped off my stuff at the B&B where I stayed. I had one of the honeymoon suites:

Yes, that’s my bottle of whiskey sitting on the table.

I like to be prepared . . .

That evening was the welcome dinner for Knit Out attendees and a very good time was had by all.  I was delighted to meet the other teachers, Joan Schrouder and Mags Kandis, as well as all the very friendly and welcoming knitters who came to the event. Keely had arranged for Stacy to do a trunk show of her gorgeous yarn, and she also had a big basket of my new Lorna’s Laces colorway, WendyKnits Sunrise, in Shepherd Sock.

The rest of the weekend passed all too quickly, in a blur of classes with wonderful knitters, great meals, laughter, and late nights of knitting and talking til the wee hours. I taught Muriel to knit on Saturday night. She was amazing — she picked it up in a snap!

You gotta have a souvenir, right? So I managed to snag some of Stacy’s yarn for myself.

And Muriel gave me a great souvenir!

We had a Sunday morning class and then the farewell luncheon. After classes, I posed for a photo for the S.W.A.K. “Wall of Fame” and also created the traditional S.W.A.K.Kiss for them.

I felt like Adam Richman on “Man Versus Food.” It was the whole “Wall of Fame” concept that did it!

All too soon it was time to return home. As much fun as I had, it’s still good to be home!

I saw that Lucy was tracking my flights online:

And she’s finally taken some time out from shadowing my every step to play with her toys!

Tomorrow it’s back to work and back to real life.